Laboratory of the Precarious: Prototyping Entrepreneurial Living in Shenzhen

Making has been envisioned as an enabler of an entrepreneurial self that prototypes hopeful interventions into precarious work and life conditions. This article unpacks how Shenzhen, a city in the south of China, was transformed from a site of low-quality production into the ideal laboratory for this subjectivity of entrepreneurial living. It shows how prominent and mostly male actors began experimenting with professional identity and expertise in design and engineering by articulating their engagement with Shenzhen through feminist and postcolonial critiques. Because these critiques only figured implicitly and were unacknowledged, the potential to build more democratic worlds was undermined.